


An Enquiring Mind

by ImpOfPerversity



Series: Picaresque-verse [6]
Category: Baroque Cycle - Neal Stephenson, Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-07-24
Updated: 2005-07-24
Packaged: 2019-10-02 22:57:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17272736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImpOfPerversity/pseuds/ImpOfPerversity
Summary: Posted to LiveJournal by Tessabeth in 2005; ported to AO3 by Gloria, fourteen years later.Het in the mix!





	An Enquiring Mind

**Author's Note:**

> Posted to LiveJournal by Tessabeth in 2005; ported to AO3 by Gloria, fourteen years later.
> 
> Het in the mix!

She opens her eyes, and there is that low, creaking black ceiling, almost close enough for an outstretched hand to touch it; like a cell, like those vile _coffins_ that the Westerners pack their dead into.

Indilla takes a deep stilling breath against the panic that rises in her; tells herself, _I am a Princess of Malabar. I am of the Royal Line. I am strong enough._

But Malabar is far away, now, and she is princess of nothing. She is a useless weight on this cramped ship, a passenger who cannot pay, a traveller who has no destination, and no-one, save Darius, seems to see any glimpse of royal authority in her.

She is twenty-eight years old. For more than half her life, she has been locked away, in a place where the sky has been nothing but a bright blue square, high above a courtyard. Now, that monstrous void looms so vast and wide above her that she shrivels beneath it. And the sea, that’s always been a grey blue line, glimpsed at the rivermouth, gentle and distant; now, it heaves and lurches and squalls and sprays, all around and beneath this ship, never still, never safe.

For sixteen years, she has not seen a whole man. Now, oh dear Gods, now they are everywhere, and she is surrounded by their strength and noise and smell, their shouts and laughter and the pound of their feet. But few of them will meet her eye, and none can truly speak her tongue.

Yes, it’s very different, now.

Indilla sits up in her—in _Ana-Maria’s_ —bed, and reaches down for the shift that lies at the end of the mattress, pulling it over her head. It is still the shift that Jack Sparrow wore, when he came to get Jack Shaftoe, though now it only smells of Indilla. Over it, she puts the simple dark dress that AnaMaria has given her. She will not wear the corset that Ana laced her into, once. Westerners are insane.

It’s bad enough that she has to wear this heavy, clinging garment at all. Her first morning, waking alone in this room, she’d searched her room-mate’s scant possessions for clothing suited to Princess Indilla of Malabar; and though she’d failed in that intent, she had eventually found a long creamy skirt, and worn that, and nothing else, up on deck.

She smiles, now, to recall the silence that’d fallen, and then the wild catcalls that’d broken it; the frozen stares of the men, and the wild scowl of Danny Shaftoe as he grabbed her arm and dragged her back down below, insisting in his halting Malabari that she must dress, she could not walk about a pirate ship in a—in a—he could not find the word, and instead blurted _fookin’ petticoat_ , and she had no idea what he meant by that, but his general meaning was clear enough. He’d shut her back in AnaMaria’s cabin, and five minutes later Ana had returned, and laughed long and loud, and made Indilla wear this dress. But Indilla could tell that Ana was not angry with her. Ana liked her for whatever it was that she had done.

She braids her hair, and goes up to seek the sun.

The black deck is warm beneath her feet, and busy, always busy. There are men above, in the rigging, and men below, sitting on the deck, some of them working with rope and canvas, some of them playing with pieces of bone. Jack Sparrow is there, at the back of the ship, one hand on that great wheel, and the other on Jack Shaftoe’s shoulder, where Sparrow leans his chin. Shaftoe sees Indilla, and waves, and smiles; but he does not leave Sparrow’s side.

She sees Darius, leaning against the foot of one of the masts, and goes forward to see him. She spends a lot of time with Darius. He is teaching her to speak better English, and she can’t wait to learn, to understand again. She’s tired of being confused by everything and everyone. He’s carving out counters, for backgammon; they have no board, here.

“Good morrow, Princess,” he says, in English, with an incline of his head.

“Good morrow,” says Indilla; she pauses a moment, thinking of the words, and adds, “But I am not Princess, Darius.” She’s in a funny mood, today. Can feel the change in her life, very sharp and clear, though the future it’ll bring is not clear at all. He looks up, at the tone in her voice, and blinks, slowly.

“You are not living in a palace,” he agrees. “But it does not matter whether you are far from your home, far from your people. None of that can change the truth of who you are. _Princess_.”

Indilla supposes that he should know about such things, about holding onto your self and your identity when nothing around you is familiar or known. She sits beside him, and manages a wry smile.

Darius is quiet for a while, and then he says, as if it doesn’t mean anything, “Jack Sparrow says that we will make Madagascar in the week, if this wind holds true.”

Indilla swallows.

“You must decide,” says the linguist, gently, in Malabari.

“There is nothing to choose,” says Indilla, staring out at the horizon as it rises, sinks, rises.

“I don’t understand. You must choose to come with me, or to stay with this ship; it’s a clear decision, Princess.”

“I mean,” says Indilla, and then is silent, as she tries to process just what it is that she means. “I mean… there is nothing for me to choose, to _seek_ , in either place, Darius. What am I to do, whether I come with you or sail on alone? You say I am still Princess. Well, that’s all I know how to be. But you can only be Princess in one land. What am I to do, if I come with you? What is there for me?”

“I will find us passage, back to my home,” says Darius, for the twentieth patient time. “You will come and live in the house of my mother. My wife, my sisters, will welcome you as their sister; you can make a life with us, and in time, I shall find you a husband, and you shall have a family of your own.”

A pleasant enough phant’sy; yet, Indilla cannot imagine this family. What does she know about running a household? About raising little Persian children? About pleasing some hairy-faced Persian man?

“Your wife will not be happy, to see you come home after all these years with a young woman on your arm; who knows what she might think!” she says, and tries to smile at him to show that it is a joke.

“My wife will believe what I tell her,” says Darius, stiffly, and she remembers that he has never been much of a man for jokes.

“I cannot be a wife,” she says, impatiently. “I cannot be a mother. I cannot organise a home. All I can do is sing, and play games, and embroider.”

There’s a small silence, and then Darius holds out one of his ivory discs, and a fine file. “Here,” he says, “learn to do this; bevel the edges of this counter for me.”

She looks at the flat disc, at its sharp edges, and he shows her another that he has completed; he has filed down the corners, so that it is half way between a disk and a pebble, and feels smooth between her fingertips. She takes the proffered tool, but frowns a little. “Why must you do this? I like the counter as it is, with a nice, sharp, square edge.”

Darius gives one of his small smiles, the ones that mean that some other meaning lurks behind his words. “If you should drop that counter,” he says, “or place it sharply, the edge will chip. The counter may fracture. If you file the edge away; why, then the counter becomes stronger, princess. It will roll, and not break.”

Indilla grins. “Are all things stronger, without their sharp edges?” she says, with a sly sideways glance.

“All things,” says Darius.

*

Indilla is filing. She has been filing all day, filing and buffing and polishing and thinking, thinking, thinking about sharp edges.

A sharp edge, she has decided, can be formed – therefore, _un_ formed – in two ways. Some edges are caused by elements which protrude from the perfection of the body in question; these can be filed away. And other edges are caused by, by _absences_ of matter; and these edges will only disappear when the spaces around them are filled.

Indilla, spiky and useless Indilla, is made of nothing but edges. Oh, her body might be all curves, but her _self_ ; why, it is nothing but gaps. So many absences, of knowledge, of experience, of skill; the absences make her a creature of edges, a brittle, friable thing. Someone who will shatter when she falls.

If she is to become strong, to learn to fall and not to break, Indilla must fill her self. Obliterate her edges.

*

She announces, at dinner in the Great Cabin, that she will speak only English now. Not Malabari. Not Sabir. Only English.

Jack Shaftoe, sitting at Sparrow’s right hand, opposite her, grins at her determination, and says, “It’ll be no problem, Princess, if old Darius goes and you decide to stay; me an’ the boys’ll be here still, we can talk for you.”

“And if you are not here?” says Indilla, haltingly. “Then I am not speaking? No good. I want…” _I want my own tongue, she thinks; my own words, and ideas, my own pathway to my thoughts._ She struggles with this idea for a few seconds, and then ends, lamely, “I want English.”

“A brave and wise plan,” says Jack Sparrow approvingly, and he flashes her his golden smile. Her heart jumps, all unbidden, and she smiles back. After these weeks on board his ship she now knows why her dear Shaftoe would’ve run to the ends of this earth for this man. There is, as he said, no-one else like Jack Sparrow. She’s sure he would approve of her quest for knowledge.

“And I want cook,” says Indilla suddenly.

There’s a little bemused silence, and Will Turner says, politely, “I beg your pardon, Princess?”

“I want… cook,” says Indilla, colouring because it seems she’s saying this word wrong.

“You want Cook?” says Jack Sparrow, with a perfectly sober expression, but she can tell that something behind his eyes is spirally with laughter; and at the other end of the table, Jimmy and Danny aren’t bothering to hide their smirks.

“Crikey, Indilla,” says Jack Shaftoe, “I know you’ve been shut away for a long time, but a little more fussiness wouldn’t go amiss.”

She doesn’t understand this at all, and hot blood rushes to her cheeks; whatever’s happening here, she’s said something foolish and they’re laughing at her. But Will Turner, serious kind Will, comes to her rescue. He scowls at Danny, beside him, and (judging by the yelp) kicks Jimmy under the table; “Stop it, all of you,” he says. “I think she means to say that she wants to learn to cook. Is that it, Princess? Is that what you want?”

“Yes. I want _cook_ ,” says Indilla, pronouncing the word with the greatest of care, since she has clearly put some odd emphasis on it, though it seems such a simple sound. But she gets it wrong again, and the table dissolves into laughter. She shrugs, and tries to smile. “I am sorry,” she says. “I am not saying good.” She looks to Darius for help; but he is looking stonily down at his plate, and not laughing at all.

Oh. It’s _that_ sort of joke. She abandons her attempt to restrict herself to English, and demands of Shaftoe, in Sabir, “What have I said? Why are you laughing?”

Shaftoe explains it to her, gently despite the wicked twist at the corners of his mouth. Indilla is perfectly horrified. She’s _seen_ Cook.

“I can teach you,” says Will Turner, unexpectedly. All eyes turn his way, and he blushes. “I mean,” he stammers, “I’m not hopeless, you know, I can cook. And she shouldn’t be down there with old Ned, now should she?”

“Fair enough,” says Jack Sparrow. “All right, Indilla? Will here will teach you to cook. Though I can’t imagine why you want to learn.”

Back into English. Come on, she tells herself, you fell but you are not broken. “I am not a Princess now,” she says, slowly. “I must learn many thing.” She doesn’t feel up to explaining her edges theory. Oh no.

“Well, if you want to learn things, we can teach you swordplay,” says Danny. “Useful, that.”

“Aye, if she wants to be a pirate,” scoffs Jack Shaftoe.

“No, no, self-defence is important,” chimes in Will. “Especially for, for a woman alone.”

“She can’t even build a _fire_ ,” says Shaftoe. “I think we should try to cover the basics before we worry about advanced swordsmanship, eh?”

The conversation swirls about her, as they argue over what a Princess should be taught, if she’s to make her way in the world. As they talk, she sees that Shaftoe has placed his arm on the table, with such seeming nonchalance; but placed it so that his forearm, all golden hairs, lies hard against Jack Sparrow’s. As they talk, and laugh, they touch; she sees their arms moving gently, one against the other, a swirly story being silently woven, all but indecipherable under all the spoken stories about the table. It makes something deep inside her swell and heat, just as it did when she went to Jack Shaftoe’s room that night; just as it did when she lay beside him in his bed. When she kissed him. When he told her no.

She feels her face heat, too. That’s something else she needs to learn. What happens when you’re not told no.

*

“It’s never going to catch, Indy, if you don’t have the tinder _right there_ , right up hard under the flint, darling. Look, look, like this, see?”

In Jack Shaftoe’s hard palm, the twist of woodshavings beneath the tinder looks far less intimidating than it does when Indilla picks it up, her soft skin pricked by curly splinters. She knows what he means, but still; if she holds the tinder close, it will be set _alight_. She will be holding a bundle of _burning wood_. Surely that can’t be a good thing. She purses her lips, and bravely holds the flint, between her finger and thumb, close to the furry tinder in her palm. With her other hand, she prepares to strike it again.

“Good, that’s good,” murmurs Shaftoe, but he still bends her fingers down, closer still. “There, Indy; try now.”

She strikes the flint with the steel, but nothing happens.

“Um, harder, and at an angle,” says Shaftoe. “Come, like this.”

He stands behind her, and holds her left hand, with its cumbersome burden of kindling, tinder and flint, in his. Takes her right hand in his own, too. “We’re going to hit it hard,” he says, “And right on the edge, there, see, so’s we can make a spark right on that tinder. And when it glows, we’re going to blow on it, all right?”

He’s speaking English to her, as she requested, and she almost understands all of that. Or would, if she were not so utterly distracted by being held in Jack Shaftoe’s arms, her back to his chest. She can feel the heat of him, the beating heart of him, through the layers of their clothing, and it’s making something happen deep down in her gut. Oh, lucky Jack Sparrow!

“Ready?” he says. She nods, and turns her face a little, away from the coming spark. Towards the gentle pressure of his breath. He brings the steel down, sudden and hard, and the flint would’ve been knocked from her grip if his fingers hadn’t been on hers, crushing tight.

“There!” he cries. “There, blow, sweetheart, blow!” and he bends over her shoulder, brings up her cupped hands, blows on the red tinder. She joins in, and tries to suppress the shudder that wants to run up her spine from the smell of him, the feel of his arms contracting around her.

A lick of flame in the tinder; a lick of flame in Indilla’s belly.

“See? See!” cries Shaftoe. “You did it!” He lets go of her hands

“I did not,” says Indilla, and starts to panic as the woodshavings catch. “You did.” And she tosses the lot into the bucket of water at her feet, put there by Jack Shaftoe before they began (“If there’s one thing I’ve learnt, it’s not to play with fire unless you’re also ready to play with water, Indy”).

“Don’t throw it all--!” says Shaftoe, too late. “Indilla, you great goose! It’ll take ages for that flint to dry out,” he grumbles, crouching and fishing about in the bucket for his makings. “You won’t be able to try for again for a while.”

“Oh,” says Indilla with no trace of remorse, and she sits down beside her friend, leaning back against a shot-locker. She dips her finger into the water bucket, and makes idle swirls on the hot dark deck, swirls which steam and shrink in the sun.

“Jack…” she says, in her most wheedling voice. He looks at her with a raised eyebrow that acknowledges his suspicion of her tone. “Indy?”

“You are my friend, Jack?”

“Course I am,” he says, a little guardedly she thinks. She looks at him straight on, at his eyes which are such a violent blue under all this sky. Inside, they were dark water. Out here, oh, they blaze.

“I want to learn things,” she says.

“Ain’t that what we’re doing? Learning? Till we throw things in the bucket, that is?”

“Other things,” says Indilla firmly. Her heart is hammering away; can he see it? Can he tell?

“Such as? I’m not a learned fellow, me, but I s'pose I know a fair bit,” says Jack doubtfully.

“I want to know…” says Indilla, not quite so firmly this time.

“Yes?” he prompts, bending to catch her gaze again.

“The way,” she says, awkwardly; “The way, between a man and a woman. What it is to… to find… pleasure. In the, in the body.”

He’s gone a funny colour when she looks up at him, all red under his tan, and his lips are quirking, as if he doesn’t quite know whether to laugh.

“Not with Cook, though,” she says, grinning, and giving him permission to. Because she likes to see him smile. But he doesn’t, not really; it’s a funny, wry smile, and he’s fiddling with his firestone, drying it again and again on the palm of his hand.

“Darlin’,” he says, “where you’re going – wherever you’re going – it ain’t like Malabar. In most other parts… well, it ain’t the done thing. You’ve got to wait, till you find yourself a husband.”

Indilla snorts. “As you wait, to find a wife?”

“Not the same thing,” says Jack airily. “I’m not of the female persuasion, and I’m not seeking to marry me some rich fellow.”

Indilla didn’t know that she was seeking that either, but puts that line of argument to one side, because he’s still talking.

“It’s precious, what you’ve got,” he says, earnestly. “Worth a lot. Why d’you think Jack Sparrow threatened his men so, eh? They mayn’t touch you, Indy. That’s what we’re here to protect you from.”

“I do not want to be _protected_ ,” Indilla protests, lapsing into Sabir for the purposes of more cogent argument. “And, Jack, can you not see that to have something precious is to put myself in danger of having it taken from me? This is not a useful commodity, that I have. It is merely an opportunity to be robbed. I don’t want that. I want to… to give it away. To learn what it is that I have to trade.”

Jack looks upset. “It ain’t a matter for _trade_ ,” he says.

She puts a hand on his arm, gently smoothing down the golden hairs there. “Jack, dear Jack; I’m all I _have_ to trade.”

Jack understands this, she can tell. He nods, and then says, seriously, “But even as a trade… you’re worth more if you haven’t… haven’t, um, learnt this through, ah, _experience_ , Indy.”

“That’s silly,” she says. “Who’s to know whether I’ve learnt it or not? I can just tell them I haven’t. And anyway, Jack, I’m too old to be the way I am. Anyone who would marry someone as old as I – and I don’t know if I want that anyway, you silly man! -- would assume that she was not ignorant any longer.”

Jack thinks for a moment, and the breeze picks up the lock of hair that’s fallen into his eyes. “Are you asking me, then, whether I’ll… teach you? ‘Cause I’ve got to tell you, sweet, I’m the wrong man to ask. Half-Cocked Jack, remember?”

“I know,” says Indy, and she wriggles a little, a bit ashamed of herself for asking this. “I do know. But I was thinking, maybe, there might be someone else who could teach me. But I don’t know if I would be… to anyone’s liking.”

“Course you would be! Lovely thing like you!” says Jack, quite cheerful now he’s personally off the hook; but then he reconsiders, and adds, “But you shouldn’t be asking anyone, anyway, Indy; I tell you, it’s the wrong thing to do.”

“Why can’t I ask? Can _you_ ask?”

“Ask some fellow whether he’d like to…? Darling, you’ve got to be joking!”

“No,” says Indilla, scowling.

“ _No_ ,” says Jack. “But I think this flint is dry, if you’d like to learn something _useful_.”

*

Jimmy and Danny are more interested in fighting each other than in teaching her. They make her hold the sword, and parry one or two slow and careful blows; but then, Jimmy plucks it from her grip and cries, “No, no, Indilla, like this, love – sit down, sit down and I’ll show you,” and he takes a defensive stance; Danny grins, and lunges fast and hard, and Jimmy swears as there’s a mad ring of steel, and then they’re swinging at each other like wild men, cursing and laughing and sweating in the sunshine, and they’ve all but forgotten her.

She doesn’t mind. She didn’t want to learn to fight with a sword, really, anyway. She was only doing it to please them; and if this pleases them more, well, so be it. And it’s lovely to watch. They’re shirtless, their muscled backs gleaming and reddening in the sun; fine blonde hairs trace down their bellies, glinting as they jump and spin. The muscles of their legs are hard, sharply defined where breeches pull tight; their red mouths are wide with laughter and shouting, dark brows crashing together as they frown with concentration. Danny bites at his lower lip as he feints towards his brother; swords slide and ring till they are hilt-locked, the brothers face to face, chest to heaving chest. Their profiles sweetly identical.

Indilla looks away. Since talking to Jack this morning, it’s been driving her mad. The idea is in her head now, and she cannot let it go. She just can’t bear it any longer. And these two…

“See?” says Jimmy. “See what I mean, Indilla?”

“Oh, yes, I see,” she lies, agreeably. Danny laughs. “What a load of shite, Indilla, you’ve no idea what he just did,” he says.

“No,” she says, still smiling. “But, I have brought beer for you.” She holds up two bottles, from a bucket of cold water. “To thank you for my lesson.”

“Ah, you’re a good girl, you are!” says Jimmy with much satisfaction, and they take a bottle each, and come and sit beside her. She watches the movement of their throats as they drink. Thinks about them, and her sister.

“In Malabar,” she says, twisting the end of her long plait around her finger. “In Malabar…”

“Yes, in Malabar…?” prompts Danny.

“You lay with Kottakkal,” she says. She watches their faces; quick thunder, then blankness.

“Aye,” says Danny, and then drinks again. Jimmy says nothing; scowls out at the horizon.

This is not precisely the reaction she was hoping for. It really doesn’t seem that they have many fond memories of the queen. Perhaps a more… generic approach will work.

“You lie with women,” she says, in a conversational tone.

“Have done,” says Jimmy, and then with a grin—or is it a grimace?— “Plenty. Too much. Been rather… over-exposed, you might say.”

Indilla does not understand. She frowns, shakes her head, shrugs. Danny looks at his brother, then turns to her, looking at her intently. His eyes are bright as Jack’s; his hair is different, though. It’s the colour of a faded apricock, all washed out with sun; not Jack’s pure sweet straw. She wants to touch it, where it lies across his shoulder in a long tail.

“What Jimmy means,” he says, slowly, “is that your sister… well, Indilla, she made us lie with many, many women. And now we don’t much want to, for a while. Understand?”

“Yes,” she says, a little stiffly. They could not make it clearer, really. “Anyway,” she says, nonchalantly, “now you have William.”

They don’t smile, but something changes in their eyes, in their faces; something puts a sheen of happiness on them. “Yes,” says Jimmy. “We do.”

“Does _he_ lie with women?” says Indilla, archly cruel. But it’s hard to hurt a Shaftoe; they let everything slide off them, off the slick wax of their smiles.

“Not that we’ve noticed,” says Danny, and his brother adds, “But we can’t blame you if you’re keen to ask, Indy; he’s a fine specimen, alright.”

“I don’t want to ask anything,” says Indilla, colouring and looking away.

“Pshaw, sure you do,” says Danny.

“No I do not.”

“Yes you do.”

“I do not!”

“You _do_!” insists Danny, and now he’s looking rather delighted. “Seamus, will you look at it! The Princess wants herself a man!”

“I just want to learn,” says Indilla, sulkily, flushing under the weight of their smirking grins. “Soon they say I must find a husband. I don’t know what to do with a husband. How to make a husband happy. And Jack says I must not learn,” she adds cunningly, knowing how much these sons love to find a point of disagreement with their father.

They disappoint her, however, by nodding sagely and concurring. “Best save yourself,” says Jimmy.

She’s so angry she could cry. Why? Why can everybody have this pleasure but her? Why can everyone have the knowledge, but her?

*

William Turner teaches her how to cook a fish stew, and he is handsome and polite and patient and charming. When he laughs his eyes crinkle up and nearly disappear, but when she asks him why he has not married (thinking that perhaps a more angled approach is called for, with a young man as relentlessly _nice_ as this one; he’s not a Shaftoe, after all) the laughter falls away, and he goes rather stiff and cool.

“I nearly did, once,” he says eventually. “But… but I left her, to follow Jack Sparrow.”

“Was she beautiful?” says Indilla, most cheered by the news that William Turner has been known to have such feelings for a member of the fairer sex.

“Yes.”

“Did you love her?”

“I thought I did. For a while.”

“What made you not think it?”

He chops a handful of coriander into smaller, smaller, smaller pieces. Tiny pungent shreds, till the air is full of lemony gorgeousness. “I saw Jack,” he says in a low voice, “and I knew then that I could never want her the way that I should.”

Indilla sighs in ostensible sympathy, though it’s as much for herself as it is for him. She knows when she’s pursuing a lost cause.

*

After their evening meal, she excuses herself; leaves the men to their rum and jokes (her absence, she’s sure, enlarging their potential repertoire considerably).

On the quarterdeck, AnaMaria stands at the helm, silhouetted against the great lanterns lit behind her. She nods at Indilla, gives her quick smile, and then her face returns to its usual expression of grim concentration. There’s a lot that Indilla would like to ask that woman; but she’s somehow forbidding. A wrong step, there, would be a wrong step that could never ever be undone. Indilla won’t risk that, not with the only other woman on board.

Instead, she wanders up towards the bow. There are small groups of men on the deck, each huddled around its own lanthorn, laughing low over their games and nodding at her passing.

She feels like a different species, tonight; someone, something, other and alone. That inconstant sliver of moon does nothing to light their way, and the sea and sky before her are an immense black void, a warm wind and a fresh smell of salt and nothing else. She undoes her plait, lets the wind catch at her hair just as it catches at her skirts, and closes her eyes; feels as though, if she should let go of the rail, the wind would sweep her up into the blackness. A weightless wisp of nothing real or human, nothing but a collection of missed possibilities, wasted opportunities.

The tear on her cheek is cold. It reminds her of her bodily self, and she wipes it away, angrily.

“What’s this?” says a warm voice behind her. “What’s upset you, princess?”

The way Jack Sparrow says princess, it’s not a title. It’s a nickname, full of affection. She likes it.

“Nothing,” she says, and then, haltingly, “It was… it was sea. In my eye.”

“Ah. Terrible thing, spray,” he says solemnly, and then just stands there, beside her, a little behind her, keeping her company.

After a while, he adds, “And did you learn much, today? All you wanted to learn?”

Indilla tries to smile. “I learned that I will never be a swordswoman.”

“Not many can be, darlin’. Don’t take it to heart. Anyway, those boys were too busy showing off to teach you a damned thing.”

Indilla nods, and laughs and shivers at the recall of those handsome creatures all fierce and laughing as they tried to outdo one another.

“You learned something with young Will,” says Jack Sparrow encouragingly. “That was a fine supper, that was.”

“William made it,” says Indilla with a shrug. She can’t exactly claim responsibility for that, though she does think she’d have some reasonable chance of replicating it, if necessary. Will was a good teacher. Patient and dear.

“And from my Jack?” says Sparrow softly, and he’s standing a little closer now; his arm presses against her shoulder with the motion of the ship, and in anyone else it might be accidental, but not this man. “Did you learn what you wanted to learn from him?”

There’s something about the tone of his voice when he says that; she can hear his knowledge of her conversation with Jack Shaftoe, hear it in the way his voice tilts at the end of his sentence, hear it in the pauses between his words. He’s not talking of firelighting, but something else altogether. She flushes, all warm. “Jack spoke with you,” she says, and turns her face away from him. Even in the black night, lit only from afar by sputtering lanterns, Jack Sparrow’s gaze is too clever, too knowing to bear.

“Aye,” he says.

“And you?” says Indilla after a moment, quelling her embarrassment and turning to face him, her chin held high. “You think, like him, that I should not learn these things? Like Jack, and Jimmy, and Danny, you think I must be, must stay…” She’s searching for the word, but doesn’t know it.

“Ignorant?” he says, and now he stands close before her, and his smile is vulpine. “Ah, darlin’, I understand you. I hate bein’ in the dark meself.” She frowns, not understanding, and he says, “Not knowing, princess; I hate not knowing.”

He does not seem to be mocking her for her ignorance. “Yes,” she says. “I hate not knowing.”

He puts his hand over hers on the rail; lifts her knuckles to his mouth, and there’s a tickle of moustache on the back of her hand, the lightest touch of warm dry lips. Indilla tries to control her breathing as something hot and liquid begins to coalesce deep in her belly. “I must confess, though,” he says, “I do agree with Jack and the boys.”

The liquid thing lurches with disappointment and she tries to snatch her hand away; but he holds her tight. The wind is tangling and lifting his hair and hers, twisting them together, black on black. “Let me finish, princess,” he chides her, with a glint of gold from his mouth that says he’s still smiling. “I agree that you should hold onto what you’ve got, you should stay untouched. That’s valuable, that is. But sweetheart… I don’t hold with _ignorance_. Staying a maid, technically speaking; why, that don’t mean you can’t _learn_.” And he runs a fingertip down the line of her jaw. Down her throat, to the notch of her collarbone.

Indilla swallows, her heart hammering. She thinks of all her attempts to learn, recently; of climbing into Jack Shaftoe’s bed, of kissing him, of touching him, of being told no. She thinks of that strange half-hour crouched silently outside his door with all her sisters pressed around her, listening to the beautiful animal sounds of this man and her dear Jack, reunited. She’ll go _mad_ if she doesn’t know. Mad!

But for all her interest, she’s surprised, too; she had not thought that Jack Sparrow would offer… whatever it is that he’s offering.

“You would… teach me?” she manages to say.

“Well,” he says, and his eyes are dancing, “the problem is, darling, that it takes two, see. And one of them ain’t going to be _you_ , for reasons we’ve already covered. So I’d say we need to have a word with Mr Shaftoe, wouldn’t you?”

*

“Are you in-fucking- _sane_?” enquires Mr Shaftoe, politely.

“Not at all; well, not notably more than usual,” says Sparrow happily. “What’s the problem, mate? Chances were we were going to do it anyway, let’s be honest. So we’ve a spectator; what’s the difference?” Then he smirks, and says to Indilla, “Actually, sweetheart, it might make a little bit of a difference; everyone performs better with an audience, Jack, don’t you think?”

Jack Shaftoe reaches past his emptied mug, takes up the rum bottle, and swallows once, twice, three times.

“Is this because of what I told you, about me and Indy back in Malabar?” he says. “You still jealous, Jack?”

“What of?” says the pirate, all wide-eyed innocence and open palms. “You both told me it din’t go anywhere.”

Indilla risks a peek up at Shaftoe’s blue eyes, unsure if he’s angry, or annoyed with her, or… But he’s looking at Sparrow, now. “And where exactly are you suggesting that _this_ little masque should go?” he says.

“S’up to us, ain’t it, Mr Shaftoe… we’re the teachers, see.” Sparrow takes one, two, prowling steps, round behind Jack Shaftoe, and puts his arms about Shaftoe’s waist, palms splayed flat, one sliding up into the deep slash of Shaftoe’s shirt, the other inching down. “And you _know_ ,” he murmurs, “that I’m a good teacher, me.”

Shaftoe looks over at her, and flushes, and grins. “Indy,” he says, “Are you sure, darlin’? It ain’t all pretty.” (Indilla, looking at the two of them standing there, doubts the veracity of this claim.) “And it ain’t the same, not as it is with a girl. I don’t want to confuse you.” He turns then to Sparrow, and mutters into his ear; waves his hands about, and Sparrow laughs. They whisper together, too low for her to hear, and she shifts uncomfortably.

“We might have to make some, ah, compromises,” says Sparrow. “Some things might be more… useful to learn than others, eh?”

Indilla has no idea what this means. But she nods, anyway.

Sparrow snuffs a lanthorn; now there is only one, sitting on the table, throwing dim gold light and long black shadows. Indilla’s heart is beating so fast, so fast. She digs her nails into the meat of her palms, and leans back against the wall, a stranger in the strangest land of all.

“Well, then; first thing to learn,” says Sparrow, “is that it’s customary, princess, to show one’s appreciation of one’s… ah… companion, by kissing him.”

“She knows about kissing,” says Shaftoe, and he winks at her. Indilla smirks, and Sparrow makes a moue at them both.

“Bet she don’t know what it is when _we_ kiss,” he says, low, in Jack Shaftoe’s ear; he gives Indilla a sly look, and then puts a hand behind Jack Shaftoe’s head, and kisses him.

The strangest, most delightful thing to see, two strong men doing this, and Indilla bites her lip. Shaftoe stands stiff and resistant for a moment, uncomfortable, looking sideways at her. She raises her eyebrows in appreciation, and something sparks in his gaze, and the dimple appears high on his cheek. She sees his jaw open, sees Sparrow’s respond; sees him put a strong hand down low on Sparrow’s spine, and bend him back, kissing him all hard and greedy and making a sighing, humming sound as he does so.

Their arms are all round and about one another, and their bodies press close, and they… they _fit_ , that’s the only word she can think of to describe it. Like two puzzle pieces, clicked together, yin and yang, a pair, found.

It’s beautiful, and arousing, and painful to watch. She thinks it would be easier to watch things that are less about them, themselves, and more about their bodies. She aches to see. She’s seen them both, shirtless, lazing in the sun or hauling on ropes or climbing up high in the rigging, and she knows it’s a fine sight. Knows there’s more, too.

“I know about kissing,” she says suddenly, and adds, finding some trace of her past imperiousness, “Show me more.”

They break apart, and Sparrow laughs. “Well, here’s a lesson for you, princess; sometimes it don’t pay to hurry things too much. Sometimes it pays to take your time.”

“And sometimes,” says Shaftoe, pulling his captain’s shirt from his breeches, “you, mate, don’t know the difference between taking your time and taunting a man beyond bearing. Sometimes, you should just fucking get on with it.”

“Greedy,” mutters Sparrow, grinning and sliding his hands up under Shaftoe’s shirt.

“Tease,” growls Shaftoe, and he pulls Sparrow’s shirt up and off, and Indilla’s overtaken by a rush of swirly heat down low and deep. So beautiful. The gold and the ink, barbaric patterns and shapes and pictures, nothing like the delicate traceries of home, and yet, they have their own appeal, most certainly. His chest, like those of her countrymen, is almost hairless. He is not like some of the furry savage men that come out of the west and the north. He bears scars, too; and Jack Shaftoe puts his lips to them, as if in greeting, as if it’s a tradition between them.

“When I first met him,” he says to Indilla, between kisses and caresses of his love’s body, “we were so young, Indy; he was so perfect and plain and unmarked. And I remember that, when I see him now. But that was just a blank piece of paper, that body; and here’s what’s been painted on it, and oh, Christ, it’s lovely, ain’t it?” He kisses Sparrow on the mouth, then, and Sparrow curves against him, wanting more of something, but Jack Shaftoe’s kiss is short, and then he says, “So there’s a thing to learn, Indy. Some women think that it’s that blank paper that’s beautiful, and they’re sad when life writes upon it. They’re wrong, d’you understand?”

“Yes,” she says, impatient and wanting flesh, not philosophy. Wanting Shaftoe himself to show his skin, and Jack Sparrow obliges her, plucking at soft linen and teasing, “Who was going on about _getting on with it_ , a minute ago? Was it this fellow here, the one who’s still fully dressed?” as he pulls off Shaftoe’s shirt, and there he is. The same, and yet different; the wider shoulders, wider chest, the sprinkling of gold hairs, the single loop of gold in his nipple. She remembers him telling her and her sisters about the night he was given it, by Jack Sparrow’s hand; and when Jack Sparrow bends and licks at it with his pointed tongue, she feels the weight of history in that gesture.

“Just for your information, sweetheart,” says Shaftoe, a rosy flush appearing at the base of his throat, “that’s something that feels damnably fine.”

Indilla’s own nipples are pressing against the thin fabric of her underdress, and tingling a little. Several parts of her are tingling, actually. Especially when Sparrow starts to undo the buttons of Jack Shaftoe’s breeches.

But—“No, Jack,” says Shaftoe, with a glance her way. “Don’t show her that. Show her what should be. Show her… ah, let’s show her your perfection.”

“You ain’t anything less than perfect to me,” whispers Sparrow with glarey certainty, but Shaftoe just grins, and says, “Come on, Jack, don’t you want to show her what it is to have my mouth ‘pon you?”

Indilla stares; does he mean, does he really mean…? She feels dizzy with some hot thing that has only come to her in dreams before now. Her pulse is loud in her ears, and every move these men make, every angle and shadow, every warm strong curve, is making it louder; it roars, roars, as Jack Shaftoe kneels before the pirate and slowly, slowly undoes every bone button there, and there’s a great pushing _thing_ under the fabric that surely wasn’t there before; then Shaftoe’s hands are sliding into the waistband, pushing down, and she can’t _see_ , because his face, his cheek is against that thing, and she steps to the side, desperately curious; can see, there, oh gods, the pale curve of Jack Sparrow’s backside, indented where Shaftoe’s fingers clutch him; there, now, the hard muscle of his thighs, and he steps out of the breeches, is bare in this room before them both, and Shaftoe leans back, looks up at him, and Indilla gives a little gasp.

There’s this… enormous… oh my.

“That,” says Jack Shaftoe, smugly, “is perfection in human form, Indy. Ain’t it?”

She’s not sure. It’s so… so very… and rather… she looks away, waiting for the leaping in her heart to subside. Looks back up to his beautiful chest, his elegant dark face; he’s watching her.

“You all right, darling?” he says. “Is that too much? Would you rather go?”

Go? Oh, that’s the last thing she wants to do. She shakes her head, and sits down on the edge of the cot. Here, she’s at Jack Shaftoe’s eyelevel, and Sparrow looms over them both like some beautiful, terrifying statue.

“They ain’t _all_ that big,” says Shaftoe, helpfully, and Sparrow smirks. “But, well, you get to like it after a while, honest, Indy.”

“What do you…” says Indilla, her mouth all dry. There’s something magnetic about Jack Sparrow’s muscled body, about the flatness of his belly, about that… that thing. The urge to touch is frighteningly strong, and before she can stop it, her hand’s hovering in the air between them. She snatches it back, hot with embarrassment, but Sparrow says, “Go on, sweetheart; learn.”

The flesh is so warm, the skin so ridiculously silken, and when she wraps her fingers round, it’s hard as bone. A magic, conjured out of nowhere by Jack Shaftoe’s touch. Between Indilla’s legs there is a swelling, too; warm, pulsing, full, needy. A delicious sensation that, till now, has been generated only by formless dreams and vague imaginings; or by the touch of her own hand.

Jack Shaftoe puts his hand over hers, shows her how he strokes his love, and she’s surprised at the tight grip of it, but Sparrow is hissing above them and it’s clearly what he likes.

“See?” murmurs Shaftoe. “Feels good. Eh, Jack?”

“Mmm,” says Sparrow, who’s got one hand now on Shaftoe’s head, the other on Indilla’s.

“But Indy,” Shaftoe says, “what makes a fellow even happier than a hand on his cock, is this.” And he puts out his red tongue, and makes a long, broad swiping lick up the length of Jack Sparrow, who gasps and mutters, “Fuck, yes, Jack, and the rest; god, show her, show her what your mouth can do to me.” Indilla would gasp, too; there’s something so base, so wrong about that connection of tongue and flesh, but the way it happens here, the willing desire and the clear pleasure, makes it unspeakably fine. To watch, at least. She does not think she could _do_ it, not here and now and to Jack Sparrow and under Jack Shaftoe’s watchful eye.

The sight of it, yes, that’s enough… Indilla’s hips want to move, the muscles of her belly are tightening of their own accord. She lets go of Sparrow’s cock, slides her hand daringly over the silken skin of his hip. His hand runs warm over the back of hers, permitting, encouraging. Oh, that skin, the heat of it, the hardness of the muscle beneath it; she’s on the very very edge of the cot, as close as she can get, her face is only a few inches away from Jack Shaftoe’s as he does as he’s bid. He licks his lips, and slides them damply over the blood-dark skin before him, and Indilla can’t breathe. Out comes his tongue again, delicate and teasing, and Sparrow tilts his hips, braces his feet wide, shivers. And then Shaftoe’s red mouth opens wide, and he—

Oh, dear gods, dear gods, and a strange little noise comes out of Indilla; Sparrow gives a little gasping laugh when he hears it, and pulls her to her feet, pulls her to stand close at his side, his arm about her, her shoulder sitting snug in his armpit, and oh the smell the heat the sight of him, and he says _look oh Christ look Indilla, ain’t that the most, Jesus_ and then he can’t say anymore. She looks down at Jack Shaftoe’s dark gold head, at the muscled width of his shoulders, at the bright intensity of his eyes, at the flex of his jaw around Jack Sparrow, and she can’t help but push herself, there, against Sparrow’s hard braced thigh. She needs, she needs, oh she doesn’t know what, but some pressure to ease that taunting throb in her flesh; and it’s spine-tinglingly perfect as he sways, slides, thrusts forward into Shaftoe’s mouth, and then curves against her. She rubs her cheek on Sparrow’s golden shoulder and peers down through the swaying curtain of her hair, watching watching watching.

Her hands, Shaftoe’s hands, wander over Sparrow’s torso, meeting and caressing and parting again, and Sparrow’s saying something, saying _Jesus Jack, you’re driving us both crazy, and you ain’t even touching one of us_ and then turning to her, taking his arm from round her shoulders and putting a hand to her face, whispering and panting into her ear, “Princess, princess, d’you want me to touch you?”

The answer falls frantic from her lips and there’s his hot clever hand, burning through her dress, pressing down her belly, sliding in between the two of them, between his thigh and hers, cupping her through the fabric, making the pressure just oh just right just right, that’s what she wants and needs and must have, and she’s biting at his shoulder and grinding against his hand as he’s thrusting into Jack Shaftoe, sliding in and out and there’s that hard flesh all glistening wet and one of Shaftoe’s hands has disappeared between Sparrow’s thighs, she doesn’t know what it’s doing but Sparrow’s fingers on her spasm and he groans and thrusts all the harder.

All instinct and urge, no thought left, she’s pulling at her skirts, gathering them up, up over her thigh and there’s the warm smell of her arousal and Shaftoe grunts; ashamed, she drops them, but Jack Sparrow yelps _no_ and Jack Shaftoe’s pushing them up again, his hand oh his hand slipping up her thigh, and Sparrow’s hand is there and under and has found her most secret place, is touching her where no-one has ever touched her.

The kick of her heart, the wild clench of her belly, the sweet shocks of pleasure as his fingers slide on wet flesh and she cries _oh, oh_ ; Sparrow says _ah Jack you should feel her, should know what the sight of you’s done to her just as it does to me, oh fuck I can’t wait, I have to_ and the knuckles of his hand on Shaftoe’s head are white as he tenses and gasps and closes his eyes and shivers again and again and again. Shaftoe’s eyes are on hers, and he’s swallowing every time Jack Sparrow shivers and she wishes she could see, could know.

A tiny silence, a stilling of those clever fingers on her, and she wants to cry out, _oh no don’t stop, don’t be over, not yet!_

But it’s not over. Jack Shaftoe is standing, kissing Sparrow, and she’s close enough now to see their tongues twining. But then Sparrow mutters, “Let her taste you, Jack. Kiss her, and let’s see if you an’ I can teach her something else.”

“She’s got to stay a—”

“Aye, aye, Jack, but that don’t mean she can’t—”

His hand’s gone, and she whimpers, but then everything’s suddenly even better; Jack Sparrow’s standing behind her, pressed against her, and his right hand now is hitching her skirts even as his left is wandering tremulous over the rise of her breasts; and as his hand slides between her thighs, as she leans back into him and stands wide, helpless and shameless, as his fingers slip and rub, here’s dear Jack Shaftoe before her, and he’s murmuring, “Here, Indy, here, darlin’…”

His hand is up under her hair, cupping her skull, and he presses close, leans down, kisses her. And if she remembers that other kiss, that other night when he was a prisoner and she was a princess, well, it’s purely coincidental; for this kiss, though they’re the same two people, is not the same at all. This kiss is fierce and knowing; this kiss tastes of warm ammoniac sin. His face smells of Jack Sparrow, and that’s the best thing in the world. His tongue, pushing cautious between her lips, unsure of welcome (foolish Jack Shaftoe; she puts him right on that score, parting pliant and tilting her head to him). And that tongue, this mouth, oh she knows what they’ve been doing, where they’ve been, and when she closes her eyes she can see it again, can hear Sparrow saying _ain’t that the most, Jesus_.

She puts her hands on Jack Shaftoe’s hot chest, sliding, exploring, pulling his hips close. There is something hard in his breeches, though it’s not like Jack Sparrow’s hardness. She remembers touching it, before; wonders about it, but can’t think straight, not with Sparrow’s fingers flickering over some part of her that’s suddenly where her whole body is centered. And he presses, rubs over and over and over on that place, and her spine’s liquid, she’s writhing, hips tilting, wanting something so much _more_ even though, god, how could there be more than this, than Jack Shaftoe’s kiss, than his mouth on her throat, his tongue licking round her ear, than the rasp of Jack Sparrow’s beard and the heat of his lips as he pushes her hair aside, kisses her neck at the top of her spine in a way that sends glorious shocks all the way down her body, all the way down to meet his fingers.

It’s only the pressure of their bodies, before and behind, that’s keeping her on her feet; something’s building, gathering, banking up inside her, and Sparrow’s fingers are tireless, relentless, gentle and firm and knowing… Jack Shaftoe’s talking to her, murmuring in a savage concoction of Sabir, Malabari and English. _See, Indy, you’re a beautiful thing, oh so beautiful, near as lovely as my Jack for all you’re different, an’ I swear to you, if I didn’t have this man, this perfect man, I’d want you so…_ His hand, up under her dress, caressing the skin of her waist. _And so many others will want you, Indy, and this is what you’ve got to seek, something as fierce and fine as what’s betwixt Jack Sparrow and myself, that’s what you deserve. That’s what you’ll have. Someone who’ll touch you this way an’ more, who’ll give you his heart in his eyes and fill you so’s you’re more than you’ve ever been in your life before._

That’s what she wants, she knows that now. This, and more than this; though truly _this_ , right now, is almost more than she can bear. Those fingers are driving her to some point of madness and distraction, and her body’s told her that it wants more, wants them inside. But no amount of hip tilting, of standing on her tiptoes, dislodges them from their beautiful, determined motion. _Jack_ , she begs, canting and arching, but he shakes his head against her neck, and she can sense the look that passes between the two of them as he whispers _No, darlin’, no, we’ll do it this way, it’ll give you everything you want, trust me, trust me._ Greedy, she reaches round behind herself, runs one hand over his lovely flesh, over the curve of his arse, and does the same in front, pushing her hand down into Shaftoe’s breeches, finding taut flesh that she digs her nails into as she tilts and thrusts and Sparrow’s fingers speed and there’s heat, sweet heat and the roar of Jack Shaftoe’s breath in her ear, the tickle of his long hair on her throat, and then—

 _Oh Jack oh Jack oh oh oh_ and all the pleasure in the world births itself there between her trembling legs. She can’t breathe, and then it eases, and Jack Sparrow presses just _so_ and it washes over her again. Again.

Oh dear gods. Too… so… oh.

Gentle hands release her, stand her upright again. She opens her eyes and there’s Jack Shaftoe, looking at her oddly. “Indy? You all right there, love?”

She nods, not knowing any word in any language for just how all right she is.

*

She wakes, and the black boards above her head are not a coffin. They are a box containing all the sweet and good things in the world.

On deck, Darius looks at her oddly, but then smiles, and says, “Good morrow, Princess. Are you well?”

“I am well. May I help you, again, with your counters?”

“By all means. I appreciate it, my lady.”

She sits beside him, the deck warm beneath her; and after a while tells him of her decision; that she will come with him, in Madagascar. Come to his home, and seek a husband there.

He inclines his head. “It will be the greatest honour.”

“Tell me,” says Indilla, “about the men in your country.” And she selects a new counter; takes up a file, and begins to remove its sharp, weakening edges.


End file.
